English Chess Forum

Bobby Fischer has been named in the 'Panama Papers' as a beneficiary of an off-shore tax dodge fund. You can
READ ALL ABOUT IT in this piece from the Guardian (scroll well down).

He's named alongside those pillars of public probity and civic rectitude: Simon Cowell, Heather Mills, Sarah Ferguson, Paul Burrell, and Sir Mark Thatcher. All "unavailable for comment", naturally in Bobby's case.

David Robertson wrote:Bobby Fischer has been named in the 'Panama Papers' as a beneficiary of an off-shore tax dodge fund. You can
READ ALL ABOUT IT in this piece from the Guardian (scroll well down).

He's named alongside those pillars of public probity and civic rectitude: Simon Cowell, Heather Mills, Sarah Ferguson, Paul Burrell, and Sir Mark Thatcher. All "unavailable for comment", naturally in Bobby's case.

As always, anything to deflect attention towards "celebrities" and away from the people we really should be interested it. It's worked with child abuse, so why not with tax evasion?

NickFaulks wrote:As always, anything to deflect attention towards "celebrities" and away from the people we really should be interested it. It's worked with child abuse, so why not with tax evasion?

Think you should wait a while before mouthing off. Most newspapers involved in investigating this vast dataset have already been naming key political leaders for the past few days. And the journalists have barely scratched the surface so far. The dataset is truly vast: Wikileaks was 1.7gb of data; Panama is 2600gb. Repeat that last number to yourself, and imagine what else in time will emerge

David Robertson wrote: Think you should wait a while before mouthing off.

You trust the mainstream media, I don't. It's a reasonable disagreement and we shall see. My bet remains on the Cameron clan getting away with it.

Depends what you mean by "getting away with it". You could ask, has Blair "got away with" the Iraq war or not?

And I share your mistrust of the MSM, but the tendency of some on social media to indulge any and all conspiracy theories is no more healthy.

Matt Mackenzie wrote:You could ask, has Blair "got away with" the Iraq war or not?

I don't understand how it is even possible to ask that question.

edit : please forgive me if I may appear to to be prejudging the Chilcot enquiry, now expected to report at some point in the 22nd century.

I see - you evidently think he has "got away with it" because he is not languishing in a cell at the Hague.

My point is that there are other definitions, some of which he does not come out of so well......

Matt Mackenzie wrote:I see - you evidently think he has "got away with it" because he is not languishing in a cell at the Hague.

No, my point is that he has got away with it because he is correctly confident that he will continue to move around the world in private jets unmolested until the day he dies. On that blessed day he is sure that he will immediately take his rightful place among the senior angels, but there perhaps he is wrong.

So you don't think it bothers him that he can't even move freely in his own country, such is the opposition and dislike for him?

That he is widely reviled by his own party, so much so that his preferred candidates get comedy scores in their internal elections??

Yes, this *will* trouble him, however wealthy he is and however many bloated plutocrats and bloodstained dictators he is pally with.

Good.

What a dreadful thread.

OP: do you believe that if something is in print it must be true?

NickFaulks wrote:

David Robertson wrote:Bobby Fischer has been named in the 'Panama Papers' as a beneficiary of an off-shore tax dodge fund. You can
READ ALL ABOUT IT in this piece from the Guardian (scroll well down).

He's named alongside those pillars of public probity and civic rectitude: Simon Cowell, Heather Mills, Sarah Ferguson, Paul Burrell, and Sir Mark Thatcher. All "unavailable for comment", naturally in Bobby's case.

As always, anything to deflect attention towards "celebrities" and away from the people we really should be interested it. It's worked with child abuse, so why not with tax evasion?

It's just character assassination/jealousy because dead people are soft targets. I doubt whether anyone cares whether Bobby was a tax evader or not. As cultured individuals we admire his games and don't lower ourselves to such nonsense.

MJMcCready wrote:OP: do you believe that if something is in print it must be true?

Not at all. You regularly supply the evidence

We admire RJF's games for sure, and always will.

That does not preclude him from criticism in other ways.

And these revelations mostly concern people who are very much still with us, so your wider point is also somewhat moot.

Let's move this odious discussion to the NotChess! section please Mr Moderator.

We all knew RJF was a rotten egg long before the latest disclosures and Billy Liar doesn't belong in a chess thread.